Love Me Down
by unkeptsecret
Summary: It stood to reason, then, that Shizune could allow herself to be stupid about something, just one thing, after a lifetime of spartan practicality, so Shizune lets herself be stupid for Kabuto. Shizune/Kabuto. Eventual Shizune/Genma.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing. And I'm borrowing a phrase from the Old 97's because it's lovely and it works. Spot it, if you can.

* * *

He walks through the silent battlefield, and where there is still life, gasping and sputtering in the dust, he stamps it out.

Kabuto wishes that he hadn't missed the actual skirmish.

Three Sound shinobi hover in the generous boughs of a nearby live oak. Kabuto feels their gaze on the back of his neck, but they keep their distance. To them, Kabuto is the harbinger of an angry master. They think that Orochimaru's displeasure dictates where he goes. Kabuto smells their fear, dank and spongy like toadstools. They are mistaken. For once, he didn't plot his course to satisfy his master's whim. Kabuto had followed the thread of coppery blood on the thin wind because he wanted a fight. Which he missed. A scowl darkens his features as he completes the clean-up.

"You are sloppy," Kabuto observes to the three in the tree as he pauses over a fallen Leaf chuunin long enough to send a fatal chakra burst through the shredded flak vest.

Judging by the way that the kid's guts are splayed out like seeds from a burst melon, it's a mercy killing, really. The kid on the ground doesn't agree. Her blue-white lips form a silent plea before going slack. Kabuto thinks she mouthed _Please_.

Kabuto raises his head and glares at his comrades. The hush of the wind in the leaves whispers disapproval.

"Sloppy," he repeats.

The others say nothing.

Kabuto returns to his work and finds the final victim of their slovenly slaughter under the crushed ferns. For a moment, he thinks those uncouth yokels skulking overhead had to cut off her hands to overpower her, but then he sees the ridiculous long sleeves.

The dark clothes set off her pale, pale face. She wear no _hitai-ate__, _he notes, and there is very little left of the tell-tale vest. Even so, it's clear that she is Leaf. Kabuto pushes his wire-rim glasses up to the bridge of his aquiline nose and studies her blank expression. There's something about her that seems familiar. He circles around to see her another way. The ferns flop this way and that in the chilly breeze. She is still as stone. Kabuto sees only a fixed mask of death. He has seen it on a thousand other faces.

This is nothing special, he reminds himself. His heart ignores logic and keeps skipping along.

_Something about her_...

Then he remembers. She is... was... Tsunade's girl.

For no reason, Kabuto wishes that she were alive to fight with him. Med nin make the most creative opponents. She was so clearly out of practice the last time they fought that he hardly counts it as a real match.

Sighing, Kabuto leans in to check her vital signs, just in case. His breath stirs her fine, raven-feather hair. In a flash, her onyx eyes fly open. She spits at him with a garbled cry that might have been fierce if both her lungs weren't punctured. The poison needle arches from her mouth towards his eye, and not for the first time, Kabuto is reminded why he wears his glasses. She has caught him by surprise-- he didn't even have time to react-- but he is saved nevertheless. Her needle glances off his left lens and falls harmlessly to the forest floor.

She knows that her last effort has failed before he fully resisters that she faked her own death to lure him in closer. She had stilled her breath, forced the blood from her face, and quieted her heart to draw him in for the kill. Now she writhes like a snake run over by an ox cart. Kabuto watches those dark eyes of hers burn with hate of him.

He takes in her ragged wounds and understands that the woman leaking life blood into the forest floor explains the Sound squad's poor performance. She must have put up quite a fight. The graceless team cowering from him in the tree canopy was only able to take her down by attrition. All of her wounds are minor. Individually, none of them would be an issue, especially for a med nin like her, but there are so very many. Gashes on gashes, cutting deeper and deeper until she could do no more. They never even landed a solid blow on her lithe body.

Here was the fight he craved.

Kabuto rests back on his haunches and regards her. She is quite lovely, he admits at last. How exquisite it would be to see her fight again. How unfortunate for her that the others from the Leaf were so green. She couldn't defend them and herself.

Their eyes lock. Something in his chest lurches forward, and Kabuto wonders when he last saw something that he wanted something so much for himself alone. She stares at him with dark eyes as the rest of her body bucks, twitches, bleeds.

Finally, the strain on her system diverts her mind away. She looks upwards. He follows her gaze and sees a scrap of sky through the dying leaves. Beyond the mud-colored foliage, there is a blue bowl of heaven.

She coughs-- a wet, sucking heave of an oxygen-deprived system.

Her pupils dilate. Death comes for her on beams of autumn's orange light. As a medic, she must know it, too. Her eyelids flutter, then close. She opens her sweet, cherry blossom mouth to gasp, but there's no space left in her fluid-filled chest cavity for air. She will asphyxiate on her own blood.

Kabuto agrees with himself that he will allow her this death.

A thin hand emerges from a bilious sleeve, as if to flick another poison-coated needle at him. Her wrist muscle spams. It's too late now. There isn't even a needle to throw. Her head arches back into the cool, moss bed.

_Everyone begs for life in the end_.

Kabuto watches her mouth as she dies, waiting for the plea to form on her thin lips. He wants to see what form her last word will take. He smells her bowels release before he understands that her nature forbids such selfishness. This woman warrior, strong enough to change a battle from certain defeat to near-victory, does not beg.

They are so much alike, he realizes. A life spent in servitude leads to forgetfulness. You stop remembering when and how to ask for something for yourself.

His hand darts into the uneven gash just under her ribs. Her warm blood folds around him, and Kabuto pours his chakra into her without thinking. He catches the last link that binds her spirit to her body and reels her back. Cracked ribs knit. Fissures of split skin narrow and close. Her head tips to the side, and her first breath propels the blood from her lungs up and out. The congealing mess lands on his shoes. It squelches between his toes as he leans in to restart her heart with his other hand.

He wants to feel those dark eyes on him again. He wants her to look at him, even with eyes full of hate.

"Sir?" a voice behind him interrupts.

Kabuto whirls around to see one of the three cowards kneeling behind him. The man's eyes widen. He sees yet does not understanding why his master's best servant would heal an enemy.

"Leave. Now," Kabuto orders.

The man turns and flees. The other two take off from the tree to follow. Kabuto, unconcerned, shifts his attention back to her. He will catch up to them in a moment to make sure that they can't tell Orochimaru of this indiscretion.

When he looks again, her eyes open. Her battered lungs pull in air with short, choppy gasps. A dusty rose rises in her cheeks as her circulation returns.

Twin balls rise in the long sleeves as her limp hands tighten into fists, preparing to attack.

The chakra signatures of the three cowards grow dimmer with each passing second.

"Some other time," he whispers into her hair.

Kabuto dumps all the chakra he can spare into her coils. She is a Sannin's apprentice; she can heal herself after he goes. She winces as he wretches his hand from her side. In his rush, he has healed himself into her. His fingers leave four, angry, red tears in her creamy flesh. Her bright eyes tell him that she feels what he has done, yet she says nothing.

She doesn't beg.

She doesn't question.

As he takes to the trees, Kabuto remembers her name.

_Shizune_.

* * *

Shizune puts him out of her mind. It's easy to do. There's training and Tonton. There's research and reaching over to slap Tsunade's hand away from the sake cup. She moves. She works. She falls into bed so tired and wakes up so early that every day feels the same, and she doesn't think.

Much later, Shizune gets most of the way through her watch on the first night of her first trip outside of Konoha since the incident before he sneaks into her thoughts again. The mission is easy, and the genins are sleeping in the tent not three yards away. The tiny fire flickers, one of kids mumbles something in his sleep, and she remembers that it was a mission just like this with kids just like these when everything went terribly wrong and she woke up with a mouthful of her own blood and Kabuto beside her with his hand under her skin and his eyes fixed on her face like he wanted very badly to kiss her.

So few people seem to _see_ her, and no one thinks to look at her, the Hokage's pale assistant, with such open desire, except maybe Gemna when he has knocked back few too many and tries to ask her out (again, and that hardly counts).

Shizune shudders and draws closer to the fire.

Inside every flame is a calm, dark center, and sometimes she imagines that she lives in that dead space inside of the fire of life. Everyone else dancing and shifting around her. The orange, yellow, and pale blue making the light and heat. And the little black void, what does it do? And who notices enough to care?

_Staring at her..._

As if the odd superstition that thinking on the devil could conjure him, Kabuto appears. He crouches on the other side of the fire from her. The reflection of the flames shimmers across his glasses. No hallucination could be so real.

Shizune reaches through the fire and flicks seven of the poisoned senbons she keeps hidden in her long sleeve into his throat. Four of them land in a horizontal line that cuts across his Adam's apple. Two hit the soft flesh just under his chin. One sticks in his clavicle. Any one of them is enough to kill. The poison works instantly. Kabuto rocks to his feet, gurgling as he lurches forward. Foam leaks from the corners of his mouth. He staggers, gasps, convulses. He falls at her feet.

When the twitching subsides, Shizune draws a small, all-purpose blade from her vest to slit his throat. Better safe than sorry.

She gets one hand into his silvery hair to draw his head back when Kabuto comes back to life. His eyes go from glassy to clear. He sucks in air through his mouth, and then he's fully functional again. He wrests her wrist loose with one bony hand and dodges out of her reach while ripping the senbon from his neck with the other. Clear streams of poison mixed with lymph weep from the puncture wounds.

He dips to his left and comes up with a half dozen kunai. One tears into her sleeve, but Shizune avoids the rest, barely. She body flickers to dodge his attacks until she gets close enough to try out one of Tsunade's trademark punches. After Sakura picked up the technique, it seemed silly that Shizune could spend so many years with her mistress and not know how to throw a chakra-charged right cross.

He catches her fist across the chin, and the force of it knocks him back into a tree trunk. His skull makes a juicy thump when it hits and leaves a long, liquid smear on the shingled bark as his limp body slides to the ground.

Shizune watches him this time, and sure enough, he comes around again in a few seconds like it was nothing more than a nasty, little bump. She sees his crushed skull pop out the dent like a balloon filling with air.

It is in that moment that Shizune comes to two uncomfortable conclusions. One is that Kabuto isn't bothering to fight back. The other is that he can't be wholly human.

As soon as he is on his feet, Shizune slams Kabuto back into the tree with another chakra-enhanced jab, but she snatches away his lifeless body before the trail of gore already on the trunk gets a twin. She grabs his shirt front, shifts her weight to the right, and hip-checks him to the forest floor. In a heartbeat, she is on him with her bare hands under his shirt.

She closes her eyes and dives down.

Although curiosity drove her into his systems, it's anger that draws out her words.

"Who did this to you?" she hisses.

Her tone comes out protective instead of menacing. It can't be helped. No one deserves what's been done to him.

His voice surprises her. "It doesn't hurt. Not anymore."

He came back to himself faster than she expected. Her eyes snut open in time to see him reach up and touch her cheek.

Shizune rips her palms away from Kabuto's warm chest, pushes off, and springs back to put distance between them. When she looks up, he is watching her, propped up on one elbow with a slight smile playing across his pink-red lips.

She waits for an explanation. She learned long ago that people will tell you what they want to tell you, whether you ask them for it or not.

"You don't leave the village often," he remarks. He sits up to drape long arms around bent knees.

"So you were waiting for me," she says evenly. Shizune wants to believe that she can react to his confession so calmly because nothing can surprise her anymore.

Kabuto shrugs and rolls his shoulders back. His smile widens.

Under her sleeves, Shizune secures a new needle between each of her fingers.

"You don't sound like you mind," he observes. He cocks his head to one side. The fire dances across his glasses. "Have you been thinking about me, too?"

Shizune pushes her hands out from her sleeves and her fingers open like the fronds of a palm. The needles fly true.

Kabuto swats them away with a kunai and rushes her. She defends with her fists, but he moves too fast. He gets his arms around her and slams her into the earth.

She falls down on him from above as her clone pops out of existence beneath him. His leg comes up to meet her. The sole of his sandals flips her to the right, and his body follows the arch of the kick until he is once again over her. His aim isn't injury but restraint.

For an insane moment, Shizune wants to let him pin her just to find out what he really wants. It's the genin still dreaming their children's dreams in the nearby tent that prevent her from considering deliberate surrender.

She wraps her fingers around his forearm and squeezes to tap into his nervous system. He's quick, much faster than she is, but she only needs a moment to ping his inner ear. He uses that same moment to go for her optical nerves. The night becomes all-consuming as her vision darkens.

Shizune shoves as hard as she can. She only raises Kabuto a few inches, but it's enough to draw her knee up. They are so close that she doesn't need her eyes to pop his torso higher with her bent leg. She uses the freed space to straighten her knee and twist from her center to grind him into the dirt beside her with a punishing roundhouse kick.

The artificial vertigo hits him at the same time as the ground. Shizune hears and smells him retch up the contents of his stomach.

Shizune rolls away, but he grabs at her clothes. A finger grazes her throat, and then she can't move at all.

It doesn't hurt. He isn't hurting her.

"Shizune," he pants.

She ignores him and focuses on healing the damage. She'll have an easier time of it than he will. Blindness and paralysis leave her brain intact. She can think clearly.

Kabuto makes another retching noise followed by a low whimper. The dizziness will distort his concentration, and the horrendous, self-healing machinations pulsing under his skin won't perceive the fluid disturbance in his head as a wound.

She has this one chance to gain the advantage.

The stars pop out like flash-pot dots as her vision returns. Her shoulder twitches. She inhales, exhales. In the next moment, she vaults over the puddle of sick and pins Kabuto, belly first, to the earth with her shin pressed down the length of his spine. She holds back his arms, binding his elbows just over the dip between his shoulder blades.

"Whatever you want, I will not let you have it," she says.

Kabuto _hmph_s into the forest floor. His breathing rattles through the dry leaves once, twice, then evens out, and she knows that he has healed.

"I already have what I came for," he murmurs against the dirt. "I wanted to see you."

Shizune doesn't reply.

_People fill silence with the sound of their own voices_.

If she waits, he will explain why, so she waits.

"This is your chance to kill me," he reminds her.

She hears the cracks before she understands the warning. He bucks her off. She pivots in the air and uses the bloodied tree to kick off and find a foothold in the branches above. He flies toward her, his two broken arms streaming behind him like banners. His eyes burn.

She fumbles for her needles.

A shoulder pops forward with a wet crunch as he lights on the branch. He snags her wrist with his newly mended arm, presses it to his parting lips, and licks. She gasps as his tongue follows a blue vein across her wrist and up her thumb. His mouth closes over the last knuckle and sucks.

He vanishes in the next instant.

Shizune looks at her hand. The slick trail of his tongue shines in the firelight. She drops down to her place by the genin's tent and wonders why she does not wipe it away.


	2. Chapter 2

_Her hands_, he decides at last.

She's really nothing like Shizune. The color of the Sound kunoichi's hair shows more sparrow-brown than raven-feather, her skin tone veers toward olive instead of birch-bark, and there is something dead about her eyes. The pupils swallow light rather than reflect it, a likely side-effect of repeated use of her infamous Midnight No Jutsu. But her balletic hands-- fluttering, tightening into fists, falling open, so alive-- invoke Shizune so powerfully that Kabuto feels his internal temperature tick up to a higher grade.

Kabuto tries not to stare at them while she kneels before Orochimaru's throne to deliver her report. Thin fingers flexing. The backwards arch of delicate thumbs. Each little movement holds more value than all of the quiet, lonely hours he has wasted thinking on Shizune because these hands are _real _and_ here_.

Orochinmaru shifts in his throne beside Kabuto. The slight rearrangement of limbs returns Kabuto to the moment and to his better sense.

_They're only hands_, he reasons. Nothing good can come from staring. He tries to focus on the details of her report and the way her voice pitches too high, a trilling of bird song instead of the whisper of wind in high trees.

Time limps forward. When her report drags into minutiae, Kabuto turns to Orochimaru for the accustomed nod that serves as the signal for dismissal.

As expected, Orochimaru nods.

Kabuto ushers the kunoichi and her team from the torch-lit room. He looks away from those ten dancing fingers as they worry the hilt of the katana at her hip as he all but drags the team away from their lord. He gives one final shove before pulling the heavy doors closed behind them, proud of his resolve. But when he turns around, Orochimaru is smirking behind a cascade of lank hair.

"She's a pretty one," the Sannin coos.

Kabuto shrugs, a gesture that neither confirms nor denies. He fixes his face to betray nothing.

That night, a woman creeps into Kabuto's room. She draws back the thin coverlet from his reclining form and drops down on him with the boneless grace of silk slipping from a rod.

Kabuto looks away from her egg-shell face when she reaches for his waistband. He doesn't resist, and her lips draw back from small teeth in the satisfied grin of simpering servant as she unties, tugs the garment loose. Broad-boned, square-fingered hands push up his tunic. She leans over, giving him clear view of her unclothed and wildly exaggerated curves. A riot of blonde curls tickles his bared chest as her mouth works against him.

Thick fingers caress his hip, slide lower, and close around him.

Kabuto lets his breath catch.

"He was right about you. You _have_ been lonely," she murmurs into his stomach.

Kabuto closes his eyes and lets her, and though she leaves twenty minutes later without saying another word, Orochimaru's message is plain enough. There's the biological imperative of lust, and then there's desire. A good servant can have one, but not the other.

She returns again for the next two nights. It's bad policy to refuse his master's gifts, but after she tries to sleep in his room, Kabuto starts locking his door. She doesn't come back after that.

Orochimaru never mentions it, but the smirk vanishes. Still, Kabuto waits for a two long weeks before he lifts his eyes from work to look for the Sound woman with Shizune's hands who started it all. His search lasts for another two because he must seek without looking, and it feels as though Orochimaru's eyes are forever on his back.

He finally finds her down the long end of hallway at the testing facility. According to the charts, she was admitted the morning after Kabuto pushed her team out of the receiving chamber.

The cell is dark and cold, but no darker or colder than any of the other cells along the row. Her sparrow-wing hair has fallen out in fistfuls, leaving patches of paper-white scalp exposed. She is as pale as Shizune now. Her hair looks darker against such bloodless flesh. Her head drops down to her chest, which expands and contracts as she breathes, the only sign of life left in her limp form.

Each of her hands lies where it has fallen. Kabuto slips past the bars and picks up the nearest one. Emblazoned on her palm like a forbidden kiss, a dark spot greets him coolly. The blood-wine mark of an angel of death.

He touches two fingers to her forehead and reaches inside to shut off all pain receptors. It's a purely metaphorical gesture. What she has already endured has put her beyond the reach of pain. Her death matters only as numbers on a spreadsheet, the variable span of seconds and minutes and days between application and a still heart.

On his way out, he reads her name from the chart and commits it to memory. It's the least he can do, considering that his inadvertent attention brought this death down on her.

His eyes steal down to the treatment used to end her life. He starts.

Poison. From Konoha.

A quick glance confirms no witnesses. No laughing, lipless mouth matched with yellow eyes appears from the shadows to taunt him, so he is probably reading too much into a coincidence but Kabuto's stomach goes sour because there is a chance that his secret isn't a secret and if Orochimaru did this to Shizune's proxy because of a few stolen glances, then... His mind snaps down with fanged jaws on the thought of Shizune dead. He holds the squirming, squealing, horrid little notion in the unyielding maw of logic and self-preservation. He tries to breathe. He can't trust himself not to give away too much.

The mission scroll in his pocket means that he can leave immediately, so he does. As he runs, Kabuto complies a list of ways he could have betrayed his secret crush.

_Those cowards responsible for that first encounter might have left a clue or communicated his indiscretion before he caught up to them and reduced their organs to slurry..._

_Snakes have an excellent sense of smell, so Kabuto might have delivered the message accidently by returning twice with her scent on his clothes..._

_Perhaps Orochimaru had developed telepathy after all. There were rumors in Sound, though Kabuto had ignored them before, and he certainly thinks about Shizune enough to stand to reason..._

The mission is thankless and easy. Find an enemy field hospital. Kill everyone. Pocket any useful medical supplies. It's over so quickly that Kabuto's mind barely pauses as the wheel of rumination grinds away between his ears. He takes to the trees to get back to Sound as quickly as possible, as if by hurrying he could undone what might already be done.

_He might have paused too long to look at her face as he flipped through the latest printing of the bingo books from Waterfall..._

"Kabuto," her voice breaks into his mediation on the early demise of such beauty.

He stops so quickly that he has to chakra-charge his feet to stick the abrupt landing on a slender limb. Kabuto looks down as she glares at him from the forest floor with those long sleeves trailing down to her knees. The large pack at her feet tips sideways, propped by a fallen log nearby as if tossed aside. Her chakra signature is unmistakeable at such a close range, and he is mildly amused that he was to so distracted by thoughts of her that he failed pick up on her cloaking methods. Mostly, though, he feels the sweet exchange of guilt for gladness pulse through his systems.

"Kabuto," Shizune repeats. "Stop following me."

"I wasn't," he admits. He holds out his hands, so she can see the blood. "A mission."

Her eyes narrow. "Hmph."

He drops down to her, and she doesn't run, although he can sense tension radiating off her in waves.

It would be better if she ran. His orders are direct. No survivors.

"I should kill you," Kabuto says in a low voice.

She holds her ground. "You won't. You haven't."

"I might," he threatens.

"You won't."

He wants to warn her, to tell her that he'll be the death of her one way or another, but her pale hand emerges its sheath of sleeve. It floats toward him, fingers bending then opening like petals on a blossom, and he is so busy watching it unfold that he misses the rest of her until her mouth covers his and he can feel that hand along his throat.

She kisses him slowly, as if savoring each second.

The hand at his throat tightens as she pulls away.

"I should kill you, too," she says softly.

He doesn't know her well enough to be certain, but Kabuto thinks Shizune sounds sad.

Her hand releases him.

"Don't follow me," she orders. When she turns her back to him, she speaks again, more to herself. "It's better this way."

Something not physical yet profoundly organic inside of him screams for her.

He lunges for her retreating form.

* * *

Kakashi has his porn.

Tsunade has her sake.

Gai has his... delusions.

It stood to reason, then, that Shizune could allow herself to be stupid about something, just one thing, after a lifetime of spartan practicality, so Shizune lets herself be stupid for Kabuto.

She lets her mind linger on the texture of his tongue against the soft, paper-thin skin of her wrist. She replays the moment that he appeared across the fire from her with eyes blazing from a heat that had nothing to do with the flames. She searches for, and fails to find, the thing that remind her of his scent.

When someone leaves a flower on her desk during lunch, she wants it to be from him.

When she comes home to find a note tacked to be door with a senbon, she is disappointed that it's from Gemna and the guys inviting her out for late night drinks.

She lets her imagination create lovely versions of her next meeting with Kabuto. She uses their impossible love as the bedtime story she tells herself to fall asleep at night.

Shizune isn't stupid beyond this indulgence. She doesn't let her infatuation bled into treason. She files her reports about Kabuto healing her, then stalking her, as diligently as any other Leaf shinobi. She includes all the necessary details, and when Tsunade calls her into the office for a private talk behind closed doors, Shizune does lie, not once. There's no need for anything but the truth. The reports don't ask her to pontificate on the thrill of fighting a dangerous man who clearly wanted nothing more than to kiss her.

Tsunade assumes that the experiences were revolting and uses their rare moment of total privacy to make an honest, albeit awkward, attempt at consolation. When the Hokage pats her hand and says she is sorry, Shizune nearly laughs out loud.

When Tsunade offers to keep her off the mission rooster until it all blows over, Shizune purses her lips and frowns.

"I'm fine. It's okay," Shizune reassures her leader.

"I know," Tsunade sighs. "I'm worrying over nothing,"

Tonton noses black shoes, and the Hokage reaches down to put the pig on her lap and stroke the little, pink ears.

"It's nice to know that you care," Shizune offers.

"We all care about you, Shizune," Tsunade explains.

The remark holds true. For the next month, every time her name comes up for field work, someone would swing by Shizune's office and take the job for her.

"If I see him, I'll give him your best," Sakura teases and crackles her knuckles.

"That creep will regret ever looking at you, believe it!" Naruto crows.

The other kids take their turns, most with equally eye-roll-inducing proclamations. Shizune doesn't have the heart to send them away, especially Shikamaru, who stalks in looking positively put-out, snags the scroll off her desk, and stalks right back out without so much as a familial wave.

After the younger generation has their turn, the adults cycle through-- Gai, Gemna, Kurenai, and all the rest.

Everyone knows that they can't cover for her forever. As soon as someone takes a mission for her, Shizune's name goes right back into the pool, ready to be pulled out again for the next mission, but it's the gesture that's importance. The outpouring of solidarity and support would be really touching if Shizune wasn't staying up too late at night fantasizing about what deliciously sinful things might happen the next time she leaves Konoha.

At long last, a mission comes up, and no one comes for the scroll. Shizune packs and repacks her bag four times. She gets all the way to the Gates at dawn before Kakashi shows up. He drops down from the archway as she passes beneath it, tucking away his _Icha Icha_ novel in his vest as he falls.

"Good morning," he says.

"What do you want, Hatake?" Shizune grumbles.

"I think you know."

Shizune shifts her bag on her back. "I'm all packed and everything. You're too late."

"Oh, I insist," he says with that disarming, hidden smile of his.

"I'm not helpless. I'll be fine," she retorts.

"No one doubts that. But if anything should go wrong on this mission, I'm pretty certain the whole of the village would lynch me for letting you go. So if you don't mind..." He holds out his hand expectantly.

Shizune digs out the scroll and smacks it into his upturned palm. "Here."

"Why, thank you," Kakashi grins again before disappearing into a swirl of leaves.

The next time Shizune sees the Copy Ninja, it's the middle of the night and she's been pulled from a very nice dream because the hospital is filling with patients so fast that they crowd the receiving area and spill out the door. Kakashi is sitting with his back against the nearest tree to the doorway. Even from a distance, Shizune can see he's chakra-depleted, so much so that he can barely hold his head up, but there doesn't appear to be a scratch on him otherwise.

Shizune kneels by him and touches the small fraction of his face not covered by dark cloth or silver hair or tarnished metal to make him look up.

"What happened?" she asks as she threads charka into his coils while searching out any internal injuries at the same time.

"Oh, you know. The usual," he replies with a trace of boredom.

Shizune peers into his one exposed eye, makes him track the tip of her finger, and holds up a penlight to check for dilation.

"You're good," she declares and pushes out the breath that she didn't know she was holding.

"Then I can go?" he asks, as hopeful as a child. Kakashi always did hate hospitals.

"Yes. Drinks lots of fluids and get some rest. No monument-gazing until the day after tomorrow, got it?" she prompts.

She offers her hand, and with her help, Kakashi gets to his feet. He wobbles a bit at the top, and she squeezes his arm.

"Thank you," she says. It was supposed to be her mission, after all.

Kakashi looks away, and when she releases him, he stuffs both hands into his front pockets and saunters off. It's as close as Kakashi will allow himself to get to a touching moment. Shizune makes a mental note to go to the monument after her shift ends to drag his stubborn ass back to his apartment for bed rest.

"Shizune!" Sakaru's voice calls out. The younger kunoichi pushes through the throng at the front door with both arms clutching the large pack and runs toward Shizune. "The field hospital is taking the overflow and the ones too critical to travel. They need you as soon as possible. Do you know the location?"

It moves frequently, but Shizune knows exactly where the field hospital is at all times. Tsunade lets her hand-pick the points, after all.

"Yes. I can leave now," Shizune answers. She shrugs the bag over her shoulders.

"Be safe," Sakura warns, then laughs like it's quite funny. "Look who I'm telling to be safe. You're safe as houses."

As Shizune sprints into the dark woods, she thinks that Sakura's intended compliment is, perhaps, the worst thing anyone has ever said to her.

She is almost to the field hospital when she feels Kabuto's presence. He's fast and high and tracking on a path bound to intersect hers. There's no orange-yellow fire or cover of darkness to set the mood. There's only the humid morning of what will no doubt be a viciously hot day. Shizune wants to let her romantic dreams go because her clothes are sticky with sweat and there's a load of medicine on her back and people not too far away who need it. But their paths _will_ cross, and it feels too much like serendipity to let it slip by. She lands in a patch of tenacious ivy, drops her pack to the side, and readies for another weird non-fight.

When she sees him, she reminds herself that it's not a dream anymore.

She summons her sternest, do-your-work-now-Tsunade voice. "Kabuto."

He grinds to a halt and whirls to face her. The wildness in his expression nearly stops her breath. He looks down at her and smiles, briefly. It's a flicker of sunlight between the leaves, but Shizune is certain that it was there.

"Kabuto," Shizune finds herself shouting, "stop following me."

He cocks his head to one side and stares at her.

"I wasn't," he says at last. He holds out his hands and points to the blood stains. "A mission."

Somehow, blood never made it into her speculations about this moment, and her surprise mutates her next threat into a non-word.

"Hmph."

She is about to try her voice again when he straightens and takes a step into air. He falls down beside her. Shizune holds her ground, ready for the attack, hoping for something else.

"I should kill you," Kabuto says in a low voice, but his eyes are drinking her in. They rove freely over her face, her throat, her body.

Beads of perspiration roll down her back inside her sweat-damp shirt, and Shizune's heart thumps wildly because she _knows_ that he is lying.

"You won't. You haven't," she says.

"I might," he offers.

"You won't," she says again, less sure this time.

The safe thing to do would be to stab him the side of the neck with the blade that is tucked into her sleeve while he is distracted. Never mind that she thinks that she is the distraction. Never mind that he is taller than she remembered, with gentle eyes that contrast with the blood splattered across his shirt.

But the safe thing to do is remove an enemy when the opportunity presents itself. Automatically, her arms raise to prepare for the assault, and when her sleeve drops back, his eyes shift and fix on her left hand. She freezes, confused. She wiggles a finger, and his eyes widen. She watches the wonder play across his face as she opens her hand, one finger at a time. She moves to seize his throat. She wonders just how far she can take it while he is so transfixed. When her hand closes around his neck, she feels his pulse soaring, and she decides to be stupid.

She leans in and kisses him.

He kisses her back, a little. It's nice, but it's not a life-changing kiss or even a very good kiss. It's certainly not a kiss worth dreaming over, and Shizune sighs at her own folly as she pulls away. She has been kidding herself all along. He didn't want her. That would be stupid. It is she who wants him.

"I should kill you, too," she says and looks away because she won't.

His pulse is back to normal when she takes her hand away from his throat and turns to leave.

"Don't follow me," she calls back to him, and what slips out next was never meant to be said aloud, even though she has repeated it in her mind, like a mantra, hundreds of times over the years. "It's better this way."

She gets two steps before he grabs her hand and drags her back to him.

He topples her down in the fallen leaves, covers her with hot kisses, works off her bulky vest, and presses her against his chest.

"I wish I never saw you," he's whispering. "I want you so much."

She whimpers his name when he rolls her, hard, against the rocks hidden among the roots, and there's no shame in it.

Something makes a tinkling noise, and habit makes her open her eyes to find the source. A vial of translucent fluid has fallen loose, somehow, and shattered against the rocks. A bit of paper with a leaf symbol holds together a few fragments of glass. It looks like medicine, an antidote to snake serum to be precise, and Shizune wonders dimly if her bag has sprung a hole.

It's a faraway thought, much less real than the pull of hungry lips. Shizune lets it drift away.

The tinkling noise comes again, and again, she looks. It's a tiny jar this time. The small lid rolls away and settles in a patch of grass near her bag.

Her bag, which is well out of arm's reach, over near the ferns where she left it. Intact.

"What is it?" he asks.

It all comes together so fast. His location. The blood on his clothes. The field hospital. Her mission.

She pushes him away. Another vial of Konoha medicine tumbles from his pocket and cracks against the rock.

"Are they dead?" she asks.

Kabuto bends down and selects the longest, thinnest shard of glass from the decimated container. He straightens slowly, holding it up to the light. It looks like an tiny icicle.

"I had orders," he explains simply.

He barely resists when the blows come, and as she races toward the smoking remnants of the field hospital, Shizune pulls loose the glass shard that he embedded in her left hand like a parting gift. She fights the sick urge to stick it through her greedy eyes.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time, Shizune lies to her master. It is a small lie, a lie by omission, and it rattles around in her mouth like the crown of a broken tooth before she spits it out during the debriefing.

"I saw Kabuto. He must have been leaving after he took out the field hospital," Shizune says as she stands on the wrong side of the Hokage's desk.

Tsunade looks up from her thimble of sake, which is poorly hidden under a toppling stack of scrolls. "Again? That damn bastard. This is getting ridiculous."

Shizune bows her head. "He is a problem," she admits.

The Hokage does away with subterfuge, whips out the entire bottle of rice wine from beneath her desk, fills her cup, and drains it three times, one right after another. Shizune says nothing. Tsunade can drink if she wants to drink. There's nothing else that Shizune can offer her mistress to take the edge off of the pain caused by losing so many friends in the past day.

If she felt so inclined, Shizune would be asking for her share of the bottle, but she doesn't like feeling disconnected from herself, never has. Instead, she closes her eyes while Tsunade glares into her tiny ceramic cup as if anger could make the thing refill itself despite the empty bottle.

In Shizune's mind, Kabuto's perfect mouth breathes dark, lovely things into the curve of her ear. His pianist hands take her by the waist and pull her against him. His sinister heartbeat surges under her fingertips.

Shizune opens her eyes.

Tsunade watches with a frown tugging at her corners of her lips. "So you agree?"

Shizune can't remember the question. It doesn't matter. The answer would be the same. "Yes, Lady Tsunade."

The Hokage rocks back in her chair and temples her fingers. "Excellent. I couldn't justify going after that lowlife just because he has some sick obsession with you, but this stunt with the field hospital will make it easy to persuade the Council. I'm sorry, but I can't give you much time to put together the team. If you want a position on the squad, I certainly won't stop you, but I would rather that you didn't go." Tsunade smiles ruefully. "I would worry."

"Yes," Shizune rasps through a mouth that has gone as dry as tinder. What did she agree to do?

"Good. I'll expect your team here as soon as possible for a briefing."

Tsunade goes back to faking work-- one hand flipping through a scroll, the other sneaking into the secret drawer under the desk for another bottle. Shock numbs Shizune's mouth, so she can't form the words to chide her superior for shirking. Instead, her body moves her dumbly towards the door while her mind churns slowly over the new information. She is supposed to form a team. A team to go after Kabuto. A team hand-picked by her because she is the only one with enough expertise on the silver-haired servant of Sound to kill him.

Shizune doesn't want to think about it, but her brain provides the team equipped with best possible combination of skills anyway. Kakashi to match Kabuto's attacks. Neji to turn off Kabuto's abhorrent method of self-healing, piece by piece. Sakura as the medic to hold the other two together long enough for one of them to make the kill. She knows (because there isn't a report from the field that doesn't cross her desk) that the tempo of Kabuto's missions has picked up in the last few months, forcing him out of hiding and into the open more often. It's only a matter of time before the team finds him and ends him.

Oh god. She is going to do it. Kabuto will die.

All of this passes through Shizune like the sickening, downward pull of a carnival ride while she crosses the distance between Tsunade's desk and the door. She steps into the hall. The guards posted outside the door stiffen involuntarily.

"Will one of you tell Kakashi Hatake, Neji Hyuuga, and Sakura Haruno to come here right away? I'll stay in your place in the meantime. Thank you," she says automatically. When she looks at her hands, she can see them trembling.

There is a pause as the guards eyeball each other.

"Dude. I went last time," one says.

"I outrank you, _dude_." a familiar voice retorts.

"Aw, man! Why you gotta keep rubbing it in? Fine. Whatever. I'll go."

"Remember that Kakashi will be at the monument!" Genma calls out.

"Yeah, yeah." The chuunin raises a one-fingered salute over his shoulder as he plods down the hall.

A senbon clicks against his teeth as Genma rolls the metal needle from one corner of his mouth to the other.

"Kids these days," he sighs. He glances at Shizune without turning his head. "You look shaken up. Kabuto again?"

Shizune's tongue glues itself to the roof of her mouth. She gives a quick jerk of a nod.

"I'm sorry." His expression softens, and he stretches out to touch her shoulder with a broad hand. He steers her toward one of the waiting benches in her hall. He pulls a small, curved flask from a pocket on his vest and thrusts it at her while they sit. "Here."

"I don't drink," she rasps through a dry mouth.

"I know," Genma says with an odd, little twisting smile. "Don't worry. It's tea. Herbal. You'll like it."

Her fingers work the cap loose and raise the corkscrewed metal lip to her mouth. She drinks. It's hot and tastes of ginger and honey with a bitter aftertaste of passionflower. Good for relieving anxiety.

"My grandma makes it," Gemna explains. His hand scratches behind his ear as he looks away. "You know, on her good days."

"It's good," Shizune tells him softly. "Very good."

"She'll be pleased that you said so. Don't be surprised if she tries to make you more. Don't worry. I watch her when she's in the kitchen so she doesn't try to kill us all," Genma explains.

Shizune has the sudden urge to scream. She wants to hold herself under lake water herself until reality blurs and rushes away. She aches to smash glass and burn houses. It's a cruel, cruel world that would rob someone as sweet as Genma of his entire family all at once to the Fox, except for his grandmother, whom it steals away in pieces through dementia year by year. It's too vicious that Genma had to sacrifice his tremendous talent to care for her, making someone as powerful and proud as Genma Shiranui do the ignoble drudgery of a lackey all day long at the Tower so he can go home to wipe the drool from the mouth of an old woman every night. He is punished by the same, unfeeling hand of a hardened god that would force someone as lonely as Shizune to be the mastermind of her would-be lover's death, and Shizune is angry on behalf of both of them.

Through the maelstrom of her impotent rage, Shizune feels Genma's hand slip down her shoulder and close around her wrist.

"You know, it's pretty miserable for all of us. Seeing you so beat down by all this Kabuto crap," he says. "This whole thing is bad for village morale. So I think you should let me take you out tonight. I promise that you'll have fun."

"I'm offended. You never take _me_ out anymore," Kakashi interrupts from behind his smutty novel before Shizune has the chance to answer.

Genma flicks his senbon at the battered cover of Kakashi's open _Icha Icha_. The needle sticks between the amazing, gravity-defying tits of the cartoon girl posing below the title letters. "I'll start buying you drinks when you get pretty, Hatake."

"That's not going to happen anytime soon. Have you seen what's under the mask?" Sakura chimes in. The young medic is leaning against the wall with tired eyes, twirling her hospital badge with fingers still powdered white from latex gloves. "Hey guys. Heard we have a mission."

"And good to see you, too, Sakura," Kakashi remarks drolly.

The whisper of sandals on polished floors announces the arrival of Neji, and Shizune looks from the slouching man with silver hair to the silent, young genius to the gifted healer. She sees the correct portions of a cure to Kabuto's influence take shape around her and feels her chest constricts around her heart.

* * *

Shizune doesn't remember the mission briefing. She doesn't remember going home. She wakes up in her blackened living room because someone is knocking on her door.

"Hey Shizune! You in there?" Genma calls out.

Genma, who is supposed to take her out tonight, knocks again-- once, twice.

Shizune closes her eyes and waits for him to leave.

* * *

Weeks pass in silence.

There isn't nearly enough work to make her sleep through the night. She reorganizes the entirety of the archive to occupy her mind. She starts joining Gai on his morning marathons to wear out her body. She takes on double shifts to make the time pass faster, but none of it is enough is make her _feel _anything.

Shizune stands in the shower. Her skin is the same shade of white as the tiles, and she wonders if she is just imagining the water pooling at her feet. Surely nothing but death could feel as empty and unreal. Only the occasional appearance of a canteen of hot tea on her desk and fragmented visions of forbidden, hot kisses tether her to the world.

She is on her fifteenth hour at the hospital when she walks into an examining room to see Sakura hunched over the still form of Neji on one bed while Kakashi lies face down on the other.

Shizune stands in the doorway and looks from one blood-splattered face to the next, and her heart does that clenching thing again.

Suddenly, Tsunade is pushing past her and bellowing, "What happened?"

Kakashi turns his head to the side and mumbles, "The usual."

"I can't get Neji to stabilize," Sakura reports. Panic makes the girl's voice go shrill.

"Damn," the Hokage swears. Tsunade covers the space from the door to the bed in three strides and swats Sakura out of the way to take over Neji's care.

"His arm," Sakura whines.

"I see it, Sakura," Tsunade hisses. "You take care of Kakashi."

Kakashi waves a limp hand to shoo his former student away. "I just need to rest."

Under Tsunade's glowing hands, Neji jerks and moans.

"Damn," the Hokage curses again. "Did you at least get that bastard?"

Shizune holds her breath.

Inexplicably, Sakura bursts into tears.

"I don't know!" she wails. "The weather turned so cold. We had to get Neji back, so we just... and I didn't think to check... I'm so sorry!"

Kakashi tries to pat his student's hand without getting up. His voice is doubly muffled by the pillow and his mask. "She means that we didn't have time to confirm. The target was down and static when we left."

"Shizune. I'm sorry to do this to you," Tsunade grinds out through gritted teeth.

Sorry that Kabuto is dead? Sorry that he isn't? Shizune's brain can't decide.

Under the pulsing glow of Tsunade's hands, the prideful Neji makes a sound like a baby bird. Sakura cries harder. Kakashi gives up on consolation and hides his face in the downy pillow.

"I'm just don't have anyone else who can go right now, so I need you to get out there and confirm," Tsunade is saying. "I'm totally on the line with the Council for justifying this mission, and they need definite results. Can you go now?"

Shizune doesn't trust her voice enough to speak. She turns and runs. She grabs her emergency pack from her desk, changes, and leaves. She follows the trail of Neji's blood-- red, red droplets against the fresh white snow-- through the woods until she finds Kabuto pinned to a tree and seemingly lifeless.

In the cold darkness before dawn, Shizune's scream rattles the icicles clinging to every twig in the trees, but her grief comes too soon. When she pulls off her glove, Kabuto's cheek is cool but not frozen under her touch.

Her fast breath clouds around her head, and Shizune wonders how and when Kabuto taught himself hibernation.

* * *

He wakes up under a heavy blanket of snow with her draped over him. She falls away when he sits up, tumbling on her back across his lap. Her smooth throat offers itself up to him. The snow crystals spark in her dark hair and dot her long eyelashes. Kabuto thinks that he should leave her there to freeze despite her beauty, but the tips of her fingers are already black with frostbite. There's scarely enough chakra left in her to form a single henge. Kabuto thinks that she has suffered enough for betraying him. There's no other way that the Hyuuga and that damn Copy Ninja, those methodical bastards, could have known exactly which points to strike and in which order.

He finds the strength to drag Shizune's limp body to a place where she can be kept warm. Kabuto knows of a seasonal hunting cabin tucked behind the next ridge. The door isn't locked, only latched closed against the elements and the animals. Inside, the single room feels more like a closet than an entire building. He lays Shizune on the dusty mat by the door.

He finds dry wood stacked in the corner, flint, and a ball of tinder. The little chimney pulls so cleanly and the junctures of the wall are so tight that the tiny space heats up in moments. Kabuto wonders what craftsman loved the woods well enough to build an occasional cabin with such ardor and care.

When the fire's halo of light pushes all shadows to the cob-webbed corners, Kabuto undresses Shizune with unsure hands. First, he unzips her flak jacket and slides it off. Next, he pushes up her tunic and unthreads her arms from the long sleeves. He tugs off her open-toed boots, unties the drawstring of her trousers, and slips the garment down her lush thighs, well-turned calves, and black-tipped toes. When she is down to her bindings and panties, he begins to heal her.

The cold had marked her creamy skin like a possessive lover. It sucked the life from each digit on her hands and feet. It mouthed the edges of her ears and the tip of her nose. All of the obvious places are darkened by winter's hand, and Kabuto rolls each black mark between his bony, glowing fingers until her flesh is restored. He runs his hands over her, enjoying the give of her near nakedness far too much, and discovers more patches of blue-black in less likely places than her extremities. He finds and heals a patch behind her right elbow and a spot over her left knee. A lick of it along her collarbone. A handprint over her hip.

When she is whole again, Kabuto wraps her in the blanket he pulls from her bag and retreats to the other side of the fire because he can't trust his hands to obey him for much longer. As much as he wants her, he wants her willing, and to be willing, she must be awake.

Time passes. Maybe hours. The light filtering down from the grey sky offers no clue. Kabuto feeds the hungry fire, watches Shizune, and waits for what will come.

She wakes up all at once. One moment is pure slumber and in the next she is perfectly alert and watching him.

Kabuto can think of nothing to say. He turns back to the fire and nurses the flames with another fistful of twigs.

She crawls out from the cocoon of blankets to him. She takes his face in her hands and kisses him on the mouth. It is not a kiss that asks too much. When it is over, she looks him in the eyes.

"I'm sorry," she says.

Kabuto tips her head to the side and lines her jugular with little kisses. He would open her throat if Orochimaru asked it of him. Betrayal is their inevitability. He can't blame her for teaching the jounin how to defeat him. He would have done the same in her place.

Her hands pluck off his glasses and reach behind his head to undo his hair tie.

"I'm sorry," she says again and takes another kiss from his willing lips.

He lingers in the kiss until he understands why she, who says so little, would repeat herself. When he figures it out, he laughs low in his throat.

"Don't be. It's my bad luck that I only want the things I can't have," he tells her. "You didn't provoke this from me."

"Do you still want me?" she asks. It is the first and only thing she has ever asked of him.

His fingers move without orders from his mind. They find purchase in her bindings and tear through the cloth. A sigh slips through her teeth. She arches like cat when his hands find her bare under the layers, and it's all the permission he needs.

They learn each other quickly. Their nature as servants makes every time pleasing, but it's not enough. The snow deadens all sound from the outside world. The darkness hems them in. Under the cover of their first night, they learn to ask for more.

Kabuto makes the first request, albeit without words. He picks a kunai out of her bag and brings it to her. She goes rigid in the tangled mess of clothes and unzipped sleeping bags when he shows her the blade. He flips the point around to face him. He presses the hilt into her hand and lays back. She grins like a lynx licking its chops as understanding dawns on her. He screams in sweet agony when she gets the hang of it.

After that, no humiliation is too much to demand. No fantasy is off-limits. He makes her beg. She tells him such dirty things. They drink in pleasure. They gorge on bliss made all the sweeter because it's forbidden and fleeting.

Oddly, the best moments for Kabuto happen in the quiet minutes before exhaustion claims them. In that stillness, they exchange secrets that have nothing to do with desire or pleasure. The color of his mother's eyes. The dreams of her girlhood. Favorite season. Favorite foods. With her head on his shoulder and her whispers escaping along his chest, Kabuto feels like she is wholly his, and he loves her.

"We can't do this again," she warns him once. "I can't forget who I am."

"I know," he breathes into the bend of her neck. "I know."

No one will come searching for them. It's not the way of their masters to fret over something as trivial as a few lost days. After two days' time, however, they both know that excuses will be harder and harder to justify if they dally any longer. Kabuto and Shizune start packing. They melt snow over the fire and bathe over the steaming pot. He shoves the door open against the build-up of snow. They can replenish the firewood and re-latch the door.

Shizune doesn't smile her good-byes.

"Let's not make this hard," she says. "We knew this was coming."

The kunai slips so easily into her stomach, and her blood runs hot and slick on his hands.

Her pretty mouth forms a tight line of thinned lips. She isn't surprised.

"I can't have you following me," he explains as he yanks the blade up. "I won't betray my Lord."

He loves her enough to stop the incision short of her diaphragm, but there's still a chance she will die of it. Any less and she would heal too quickly and catch up to him. As much as he loves her, Kabuto can't forget who he is either.

He presses a last kiss into her lovely hair and leaves without a backwards glance.


	4. Chapter 4

She has been here before-- flat on her back and staring up at the blue bowl of heaven through tree limbs that keep blurring out of focus because she's crying, really crying, and all the while, she bleeds. Shizune feels the hot tears slipping down her temples and hot blood on both hands as she holds together the perfectly split edges of her skin so she can seal her insides back inside of her.

Kabuto's parting kiss is still warm in her hair, and she can't understand why he didn't look back when he left. She loved him more than she loved her country and her pride for two whole days and two nights. In the end, he gutted her like a fish.

The bitter touch of winter reaches into the hole that he made before he went. The cold, cold wind is incapable of sympathy. Her tears freeze in their tracks down her face.

_Enough._

Shizune decides that she has been stupid for long enough. She's too old to keep mistaking obsession for devotion. She's too smart to pretend that pain is a form of affection. Kabuto will love her, yes, but he will only love her down. She breaks her heart with the hammer of truth.

Meanwhile, her hands finish fusing flesh over the last of the laceration. When she touches her stomach, she can feel the smooth perfection of new skin and, beneath that, the flutter of her solitary heart.

It's as though he was never there at all.

Shizune shuts her eyes and rests in the cold comfort of a bed of snow.

* * *

The report that she hands to her mistress lacks no critical detail. It includes the modifications that Kabuto made to himself in order to obtain the ability to drop into stasis on command. Shizune diagrams the new strike pattern to shut down Kabuto's systems and personally trains all of the Hyuugas on the active rooster, just in case.

Although she never comes right out and says that she healed Kabuto just to fuck him, Shizune offers no excuse for her missing days.

Tsunade mentions it only once. They are the only two people in the Tower one morning to witness those brilliant, still moments of sunrise. The new light pours in through the windows and anoints Tsunade's head when she swivels in her overstuffed armchair to look out over a motionless village.

"So, it's over now?" she asks.

"Yes," Shizune admits softly.

Tsunade nods, although worry furrows lines between her eyebrows. Her words sound fierce and low in her throat. "Find someone who can be with you. You deserve that much."

It is so ridiculous that Shizune wants to laugh. Such advice from Tsunade, the woman who stopped the ravages of time to stay as young as she was in the moment that her lover died. Tsunade, who clings to a ghost and lets the the living man who has loved her for the entirety of their lives drift further and further away, a white-haired man wandering alone into the mountains. _This _woman is telling Shizune to find move on.

How dare Tsunade tell her to let go when little Sakura still looks to the tree-line through every available window and sighs for a cold-hearted boy with inhuman eyes. Sakura, like Tsunade, has a golden opportunity to be loved, but she can't hear the hitch in Naruto's voice when he asks her to lunch. She never sees how his eyes light up when she comes into the room.

It's easy to move on when you have someone waiting to love you, and who does Shizune have? Why is it better to love a dream than an enemy?

* * *

On her way home some days later, Shizune sees a mother pause on the street to lift up her sleepy toddler and prop the child against her shoulder. Shizune follows the woman for five blocks, partly amazed by the quiet strength of this civilian who balances her grocery bags and her little boy so easily. The mother smiles when she turns into a building full of lit windows.

"Daddy home?" the child yawns.

"Yes, darling," the mother replies.

Across the way, Shizune's apartment is as dark and empty as a tomb. Inside, she makes a tea with honey and passionflower extract. She thinks that loneliness is the most lethal of poisons and that she is killing herself slowly. As long as she entertains the memory of Kabuto, she will come home to no one.

From her bed, Shizune thinks about what it would feel like to be loved all day, everyday. It's a sweeter dream than Kabuto, and she falls asleep in record time.

* * *

Genma sticks his head into her office late in the night and grins at her. "See you tomorrow."

She had thought that everyone else went home long ago.

"How's your grandmother?" Shizune blurts out too loudly.

Genma pauses to lean against the door frame and spin the senbon languidly at the edge of his mouth. "I'd say that she's about the same, which is to say gone more than she's here. I had to move her into a full-time care facility last week."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

He shakes his head. "It's okay. It was a long time coming. She seems to be adjusting well enough. They have good people taking care of her."

"That's good," Shizune agrees, painfully aware that she can't sustain small talk. She tries to find something else to say.

Genma beats her to it. "Hey, I know that you're probably really tired of me by now, but do you want to come out tonight? The usual suspects are taking me to a bar out of pity. Apparently, I'm not used to living alone," he explains.

Shizune sneaks a look at the thick file of reports that she had promised herself that she would do tonight. She isn't aware that she is frowning until Genma forces a laugh.

"Hey, it's no problem. I know that you're busy. Besides, I should learn to take a hint." He pushes away from the doorframe, straightens his vest, and gives her a crooked smile. "Have a good night."

The stacked papers nearly takes a tumble as she leaps to her feet and grabs her jacket from the back of the chair. She catches up to Genma before he gets to the end of the corridor.

"I don't really like to drink," she tells him, a little breathlessly.

This time, his grin is honest.

"No one said that you have to," he reassures her.

He holds the door and then waits while she locks up. Snow swirls around the darkened Hokage's Tower. Shizune does not regret leaving.

The bar is warm and dark. Music floats over the smoke and conversation. Genma casually takes her hand and leads the way to across the crowded room to his friends.

"Hey, guys," Genma greets the tableful of jounin.

Shizune can't suppress the blush that wells up when the others exchange smirking, knowing glances.

"Hi, Shizune. This is a...surprise," Raido drolls.

"Oh, shut up," Genma huffs.

Aoba snickers into his beer.

"Ignore these assholes. They are just bitter, bitter men, who all owe me a nice chunk of change," Anko says cheerfully and gestures to the open seat next to her on the bench. Shizune slides in, and Genma claims the last remaining spot beside her.

Aoba winces as Anko kicks him under the table. She swishes the last of her sake around in her near-empty glass while looking meaningfully at the man across from her. Aoba pretends to study his sleeve.

"_A-hem_," Anko prompts. "You _owe_ me, bastard. Now make it happen."

"Damn it," Aoba complains. "Guess I'm buying. The usual?"

Heads nod around the table.

"And you?" Aoba asks Shizune.

"I really don't-- " she tries to explain before Anko interrupts.

"Get her a plum wine. A nice one. All girls like plum wine," Anko orders. Aoba drifts off towards the bar, and Anko turns to Shizune with a saucy wink. "Trust me. A few more minutes with these idiots, and you'll want that drink."

"Thanks a lot, Anko," Genma grumbles.

"Hey, guess what? I'm the only one here who bet that this pretty thing would ever deem you worthy to take her out, and now I'm buying her a drink for you. So how about showing me a little gratitude, mmkay?" Anko shoots back while poking Shizune in the arm.

Genma moans something about hating life into his hands while Raido laughs so hard that he nearly falls off the bench.

And the laughter doesn't end. The friends tease each other mercilessly. They drag out humiliating stories from the past to torment each other, and even though they have heard everything before, Shizune hasn't, so they have an excuse to tell it all over again. They linger at the bar for hours.

All the while, Genma is a familiar warmth by Shizune's side and a rich voice in her ear. It's so easy to be with him. Shizune doesn't have much to say, but she laughs often and sips her wine to be polite at first and later because it's sweet and she likes the funny easiness that it lends her. Her glass seems to refill magically because she never does reach the bottom. When she stands up at the end of the night, the world bobbles a little.

"Whoa," she comments in surprise.

"Yes! We got 'er drunk!" Anko whoops.

"Now the question is: can we trust Genma to take her home?" Aoba muses.

"I'm killing all of you. You know that, right? Ibiki-style. _Slowly_," Genma threatens, but he walks her home anyway.

Shizune manages to get her door unlocked on the second try while Genma waits on the stoop. Instead of ducking inside and throwing herself into the cool sheets of her bed, Shizune turns back to her informal escort.

"Thank you for taking care of me," she says. The street lamps all have halos of light, and staring at them makes her dizzy.

Genma takes her elbow to steady her. She likes that he is touching her and tries to focus on his face.

"Try to drink some water before you go to bed. I'll bring you tea tomorrow," he tells her.

"You're sweet," she slurs.

"And you're drunk," Genma sighs. "Go to bed, Shizune."

He gives her a little push towards her door and turns to leave, but her mouth just keeps talking.

"I'm sorry that I stood you up. Before. That was wrong of me."

"Yeah, me too," Genma says softly. He looks up at the snow coming down and exhales before turning back to her. "Okay, I'm pretty sure that my friends were about as subtle as Naruto tonight, so if you hadn't figured it out before, you probably know by now that I have a thing for you. If you're not into me, that's fine. No pressure. But could you work up some way to let me down easy? I'd really appreciate that."

Shizune steps forward and snatches the senbon from his lips. She is close enough to see Genma's eyes go a little wide, but he takes the hint well enough. His hand slips past her cheek and into her hair, he leans toward her, and his mouth covers hers in a warm kiss. She is trying to figure out a classy way to stick her tongue in his mouth and drag him into her apartment when he pulls away.

"...And you're still drunk, and I'm about to be that jerk that takes advantage of the drunk girl," he scolds himself. "Goodnight, Shizune. Remember to drink that water."

He walks away before she can tell him that she's not that drunk, that he smells wonderful, and that she likes the way he smiles when he looks at her.

The next day, Shizune puts the note into Genma's locker, just like a school girl with a crush because, despite everything that happened last night, she is too shy to ask him to dinner in person.

He knocks on her apartment door a little later than expected, which is just as well because she is terribly inept at cooking. The rice, which still looks crunchy, is somehow about to burn on the bottom when she answers the door with a wooden spoon in hand.

"Hey," she greets him and self-consciously wipes away the hair that sticks to the sweat on her neck.

"I'm so sorry that I'm so late. You know the Hokage. She had us..." Genma stops mid-sentence to sniff the air. "Did you cook me dinner?"

"Don't get your hopes up. I'm burning your dinner," Shizune says irritably over her shoulder as she rushes back to the kitchen before anything starts flaming. She only makes it mid-way through the living room before he snatches her hand and spins her around to face him. The spoon clatters to the floor.

"So let it burn," Genma whispers before kissing her until she is thoughtless and limp in his arms.

The rice is a lovely shade of black by the time she finally returns to turn off the stove. Shizune abandons her culinary plans, and they order take-out instead. They spend most of the evening curled up together on the couch, but Genma insists on helping her clean up the charred remains of her failed meal before he goes home.

She is handing him the dishes to wash, and Genma is elbow-deep in soapy water when he confesses.

"How much do remember about last night?" he asked.

"All of it," she smiles at him. "Why?"

"Because warning's fair. You may have missed your opportunity to let me down easy. I think I'm just going to go ahead and fall right in love with you."

Shizune almost spills the pot of concealed miso soup that she was dumping into the trash.

Genma drops his head to his chest. "Damn. Raido told me to keep my mouth shut. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

Shizune chews on the inside of her lip and thinks for a moment.

Being with Genma is nothing like being with Kabuto. Kabuto made her heart feel like it was in free-fall. Kabuto made her reckless and left her gasping. Genma makes her feel like she wants to cook dinner, and he leaves her smiling. Better yet, she wouldn't hate herself if she woke up in the morning with Genma in her bed.

Shizune won't be like Tsunade and Sakura. She is too tired of being lonely.

"Genma, I like you," she decides.

"But?" he asks miserably.

"No 'but'. I like you, and I like being with you. I want to see where this goes," she finishes.

Genma extracts his hands from the sink and dries them on his pants on his way over to kiss her until she forgets why she was ever unhappy (again).

* * *

Months later, Shizune reads Hinata Hyuga's report and knows that Kabuto is gone. In a way, the news comes as a relief. It validates what she already knew: that Kabuto was always more Orochimaru than he was himself. She thinks that she made the smart choice by avoiding him and moving on.

Genma picks that moment to to drop by her office with a refill for her tea cup. No one is looking, so he leans across her desk and kisses her.

"Don't work too late," he chides when he pulls away. "I'd like to, you know, see you outside of the office for a change."

"Will you make me dinner?" she asks.

"For you? Anything," he teases. Genma cocks his side to one side when he sees whose file is open on her desk. "Any trouble that I should know about?"

His voice is tight, so Shizune knows that he is worried for her.

"No," she answers sincerely. "None at all."


End file.
